cluding the celebrated one on lithic acid, and two with the celebrated French chemist Dumas. In that year the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their Liverpool meeting, made a request to him to write a report on the then state of knowledge of organic chemistry. It was this report which originated the work which he published in 1840, namely, the work entitled "Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology." In 1838 he published a memoir on the state of chemistry in Austria, in which he exhibited its shortcomings in trenchant language, and the effect upon the Austrian Government was such as no one would have expected. In reply to his essay he received the offer of a chair at Vienna. "Come to us," they said, "reform our chemistry, and we will give you a chair." But the conditions were not sufficient, and the Austrian Government, having received Liebig's refusal to go to Vienna, at their own expense sent a number of young chemists to Giessen, there to study chemistry under Liebig, and to prepare themselves for the important function of becoming teachers of the new chemistry in Austria. In the year 1840 he published the work which I have already mentioned, and he also published a memoir on the state of chemistry in Prussia. You know what was the state of Prussia in 1840; the promises made by the king in the year 1813, regarding a liberal constitution, had all been falsified, a narrow-minded bureaucracy governed everything, a minister of education who did not comprehend his time could not understand that physical science required any promotion, or any state help. He soon went into that movement which has been described as Muckerthum, a kind of pietism which shows itself by casting up the eyes in a praying attitude, having God more on the tongue than in the heart; by a mock-modest morality which would, for example, have caused the council of this institution to have those beautiful nymphs on our walls painted over with drapery. Under these circumstances no science could progress, and there was not in the whole of Prussia a single establishment, laboratory, or teaching-room where a man could learn practical or even theoretical chemistry. It was the great boast of even talented teachers of chemistry, that all the apparatus they required for teaching was a dozen test-tubes. This attack on the state of chemistry in Prussia had no effect whatever of a good kind, but, on the contrary, the bureaucracy used its power and influence to prevent the Prussian youth from visiting the University of Giessen, and I have the authority of Kolbe that for a time the visiting this university was actually forbidden to young Prussians.
About this period Liebig purchased from the municipality of Giessen a sand-pit, at a place called Trieb, on a little height east of the town, and there he made experiments on vegetable physiology. This place bears the name of "Liebig's Height" to the present day, and I dare say it will bear it for many years to come. He also pub-
